Join the Cable Street 85th Anniversary march and rally

banners at Cable Street anniversary artist Dan Jones

JVL Introduction

The Jewish Socialists’ Group has worked consistently in the anti-racist and anti-fascist movement since its formation almost fifty years ago.

Here is its call to join the Cable Street 85th anniversary rally and celebrations this weekend on Sunday 3rd October

It recounts the positive role of radical left-wing Jews and their allies and the failings of the Jewish establishment at the time; and it makes links with Bengali resistance to racism and fascism in the East End in the 1970s.

The rally this year will be co-chaired by a Jewish Socialists’ Group member and a Bengali activist – two communities brought together by a history of resistance to racism and fascism.

We call on all who can to join the demonstration on Sunday.

This article was originally published by Jewish Socialist on Wed 29 Sep 2021. Read the original here.

March with pride on 3rd October!

Cable Street 85th Anniversary march and rally

Assemble 1pm Junction of Cable Street, Leman Street and Dock Street.

Marching to the Cable Street Mural/St George’s Gardens.

Speakers include:

Apsana Begum MP, Jeremy Corbyn MP (Project for Peace and Justice), Rabbi Herschel Gluck, Mick Lynch Gen Sec RMT, Amina Patel (Unison), Abdul Chowdhury (NEU), Noorahmed Uddin (Altab Ali Foundation) Joginder Bains (Indian Workers Association-GB) Julia Bard (Jewish Socialists’ Group), Rob Griffiths, (Communist Party), Weyman Bennet (Stand Up To Racism) Marlene Sidaway (International Brigades Memorial Trust), and relatives of the activists of 1936: Michael Rosen, Ruth Levitas, June Legg and JVL member Tony Booth.

Co-chairs: Julie Begum (Swadhinata Trust), David Rosenberg (JSG)


The Jewish Socialists’ Group takes its banner to many protests and marches but, for us, the commemoration of the Battle of Cable Street of October 1936, a pivotal moment in the fight against fascism in Britain, has a special meaning.

Fascism was advancing across Europe. Mussolini had already taken power in Italy, Hitler in Germany, and in many countries fascist movements were growing rapidly. In July 1936, Franco launched his devastating war on other Spanish people who dared to elect a progressive, democratic government, though one of Franco’s generals claimed: “Our war is not a Spanish Civil War but a war of western civilisation against the Jews of the entire world.”

Here in Britain, with nearly 3 million unemployed, hunger and hopelessness, and a loss of faith in conventional politics, a wannabe aristocratic politician, with financial backing from Mussolini in Italy and generous capitalists here, wanted to make a show of strength in East London where his movement – the British Union of Fascists – had its biggest branches. Those East End branches formed a horseshoe around the Jewish enclave, where 60,000 Jewish people, were trying to find enough work to eke out a living, mainly as tailors, shoemakers, cabinetmakers, market traders and shop assistants.

He chose the fourth anniversary of the founding of his movement to try to invade their streets with thousands of uniformed, jackbooted fascists, to abuse, threaten and intimidate them. Mosley sought support especially from the East End’s other large minority – Irish Catholics – but, on the day, the most unionised sectors of the Irish, dockers and railway workers united with the mass of Jewish East Enders and other non-Jewish anti-fascists to blockade the streets. In Cable Street they built barricades together. Seven thousand police could not clear a path for the fascists to march, as they had been ordered to by John Simon, the Liberal Home Secretary of a Tory-dominated National Government.

Earlier that week he had rejected a petition with nearly 100,000 signatures collected in just two days, calling for the march to be banned. It was drawn up by the Jewish People’s Council Against Fascism and Antisemitism (JPC) – a militant local grassroots coalition, formed with the aim of mobilising local Jews and uniting with non-Jewish anti-fascists to build an anti-fascist majority in the area. Within hours of the Home Secretary rejecting their call, the JPC was printing leaflets addressed to “Citizens of London” stating loud and clear: “This march must not take place!”

The formation of the JPC was also a direct response to the abject failure of the Jewish community’s self-proclaimed leaders – the Board of Deputies – to do anything to support the East End Jews under siege. They had told them they were exaggerating and arrogantly brushed aside the local Jewish community’s claims of police partiality towards the fascists.

We will not forget how the Board of Deputies and the Jewish Chronicle told Jews to stay indoors, claiming that any involvement in public demonstrations against Mosley would aid antisemites. It was their aloofness, their complacency, their lack of care towards London’s largest working class Jewish community that was aiding the antisemites.

Neither will we forget how the Board’s Vice-President and leader of the United Synagogue, Robert Waley Cohen, condemned antisemitism at a meeting of Jewish ex-serviceman in the summer of 1936 while telling them that Jews were prospering in Italy under Mussolini’s fascist regime, and that he himself was attracted to aspects of fascist ideology. Fortunately, the Jewish community completely ignored the wisdom and advice of their “leaders”.

The people, though, that the Jewish Socialists’ Group remembers most, and with immense pride and affection, are the parents and grandparents of many of our members who courageously took to the streets that day to defend the East End as a multicultural area where all communities would be able to live in harmony.

And we remember the unity in action of those who did most to mobilise the resistance that day, whether from the JPC, the Communist Party, the Independent Labour Party or the Labour League of Youth, and the local trade unions. We especially honour the 200 or so East Enders who continued their anti-fascist activities after Cable Street by joining the International Brigades fighting against Franco in Spain. Thirty-six of these local volunteers for liberty did not return; they lie buried in the Spanish soil.

While they were fighting in Spain, the movement here cemented the victory on the streets with a brilliant campaign to bring together the very communities that Mosley had tried to divide against each other – the Irish and the Jews. This joint campaign, under the auspices of the Stepney Tenants Defence League, saw more than 20 rent strikes against slum landlords. With both communities working closely together, it was much harder for the fascists to advance their politics of hate.

For us – as Jewish socialists, anti-racists and anti-fascists – this is a living history. Fascism was defeated then but returned to the East End streets in the 1970s through the National Front and the British Movement. Their antisemitism was intact but their principal targets were the Bengali communities that had settled in the same streets and worked in similar conditions in the clothing industry as the Jews had in the 1930s. New grassroots movements, led by Bengali youth, spearheaded the resistance to fascist intimidation and daily institutional racism, and they found allies in a similar way to the JPC in the 1930s.

We are proud that our rally this year, on Sunday 3rd October, will be co-chaired by a Jewish Socialists’ Group member and a Bengali activist – two communities brought together by a history of resistance to racism and fascism and we pledge ourselves to continue the fight against fascism and all racism and bigotry today.

Please join us!

Comments (11)

  • Paul Smith says:

    Inspiring!

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  • Doug says:

    Never forget
    Twas the women what won the Battle of Cable Street

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  • Ray Eveleigh says:

    My grand dad was arrested and fined 10 shillings. Still fighting the fascists, I will be there.

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  • Chris Proffitt says:

    I will be there in spirit. The lessons of History are so important. I learn ever day about our history that seems to have been deliberately hidden from us. I am ashamed I did not know about this and other aspects of what has happened to shape this country …we need to make sure our children are better informed.

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  • Roshan Pedder says:

    Truly inspiring. “The people united will never be defeated”!

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  • Julia says:

    Really? I’m not sure that’s correct. I’m proud of the women who played their part, especially the ones who tipped the contents of chamber pots on to the police trying to force a way through for Mosley’s Blackshirts. But it was the solidarity and determination of all the local communities. Everyone played their part, women and men, Jews, Irish and others, to ensure the police and the British state didn’t enable the fascists to invade their area.

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  • Rosemary Bechler says:

    Truly inspiring

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  • Maureen Lacey says:

    I’ll be there in spirit!

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  • Rob Wall says:

    I can’t be with you for the rally but wish you every success with it. My mother and her brothers were in Cable Street as Communist Party members, with tales to tell of events there.
    (If it is useful to have their names they were the Bowles family: my mother Phyllis, the brothers who I feel most certainly were there were Geoffrey and Ellis.)

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  • Doug says:

    Thanks Julia
    I open the door
    I’m a proud Geordie, my nana was originally from the Isle of Dogs, she brought me up from age 15
    She had knitting needle arms but could knock you out with one punch, in those days the women ruled the roost, nothing happened without their consent
    Hard as Whinstone, they had to be for the family to survive
    Would be good as you say to make it clear exactly who fought and won the battle and who did not, but still jump on the bandwagon every year

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  • Geraldine says:

    Truly inspiring
    I would love to join this historic event

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Comments are now closed.